


moonlight

by taiyakeo



Category: Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School
Genre: TW: Suicide, haha depression, i can’t get it out of my head so i vomited it out, it took a different turn from what i expected, kaede loses touch with her piano talent, like it just ran away from me, like months late, so i finally finished this, this was my friend’s birthday present i love you whelan, was the opening line from uglies? yes, was this based on dreams of love etc? yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2020-01-20 20:05:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18532207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taiyakeo/pseuds/taiyakeo
Summary: Shuichi has no hope for himself as a detective. If he fails once, what will become of him? A prodigy, they say. If they can think so well of him, they could flip and suddenly hate him too.But that wouldn’t be so different from how he already thinks of himself.Without his talent, what is he?Kaede wonders too.





	1. angel wing cactus

The sky was the colour of cat vomit. Given, the cat would have had to consume copious amounts of salmon for God knew how long, and was probably violently ill from lack of proper nutrition. It was a strange mix of orange (kitty kibble?) and pink, with similarly-coloured chunks of clouds that reminded Shuichi unpleasantly of the solid bits in upchuck. He sighed, fingering the folder he held at his side. He'd investigated another murder today. It always made him feel slightly queasy--what if he failed? Homicide was worlds away from petty theft. If he caught the wrong person… It was a prospect he wasn't prepared to consider. 

He wandered along the sidewalk, scanning the gardens of his neighbours. He didn't know any of them, more familiar with the root system that ran through the whole city than their faces. He didn't know any of their names, didn't even recognise houses. He knew from experience how dangerous it was not to have any contacts, but it caused less trouble for people, he guessed. 

Sometimes he would silently inspect their gardens, their backyards, listen for the sound of chatter of whose source he could never be sure. He knew 104 had a bird because it would never shut up whenever he wanted to do work. And 105 had a piano. He'd heard its owner playing it at odd hours of the day. Halting, mistake-ridden playing that unnerved rather than soothed. 

The gates screeched at him as he returned to his own house. He would have to fix them someday, if he had the time. He wandered round to look at his plants and the little flowers that he kept in pots. 

"Oh, hello," he heard from over the gate. He winced. 

He nodded and managed something of a smile. More of a grimace, really, but he was trying and that was what mattered. Oh, goodness, now he was just echoing his therapist's words. 

"Your flowers look lovely. Ah--is that an angel wings cactus? I love those." The girl leaned against the gate, pointing at his potted cactus. 

To tell the truth, he had literally no idea what kind of plant it was. He kept quiet and nodded again. He would never let her know how stupid he actually was. 

She brushed hair the colour of spun gold back from her ear, extending a hand to him. "I'm Kaede Akamatsu. Nice to meet you." 

"Shuichi Saihara," he mumbled, shaking her hand with all the strength of a pool noodle. "Are you, um… Are you the person who plays the piano?"

"Yes! I am. Does it bother you?"

He shifted a little. "Not, not really. Your playing is nice." 

"Oh, really?" She smiled. "I thought I'd been troubling people. It's good to know." 

What was he doing? It definitely bothered him! He couldn't even speak up and tell her he absolutely hated her playing and that it was so annoying he'd imagined himself breaking all her fingers one by one. And now he was feeling guilty. Great. 

"No, not at, not at all!" He waved his hands awkwardly. "Um, I think it's… Good." 

"Would you like to come in and hear me play?", gesturing towards her door, "I haven't had guests in ever so long."

He nodded dumbly, not quite liking to offend her, and trailed helplessly as she unlocked her door. As he stepped into the doorway he was accosted by the overpowering scent of vanilla. Perhaps she'd been baking, or maybe she had an unhealthy obsession with candles. Whatever it was, the house smelt like the Pillsbury doughboy's asshole. 

He felt out of place, shifting from leg to leg in the middle of her living room. "Do you take tea or coffee?"

"Um, anything's fine," he said in half a whisper. His eyes darted round the room, his index finger picking at the skin on his thumb. It was a bad habit that he never could seem to be rid of. More evidence that he was a failure. 

He sucked in a breath, trying to keep himself occupied by looking at things in the room. There was a vase on top of a small drawer, a single flower inside. The windows weren't very wide, and what little glass there was was obscured by a curtain. The fabric was tattered, hastily mended, held to the curtain rod by clips and tape. He wondered if she had something to hide. Everything in the room seemed cheap but functional. Not very fancy, but enough. It matched the brisk, breezy attitude that she seemed to have--uncaring of material things, prioritising needs over wants and making sure everything was right. 

A clink jolted him out of his nervous, frantic string of thoughts. She'd placed two cups on the coffee table. 

"Why are you standing there? Come on, sit down, I'm not going to kill you." Kaede patted the seat next to her. 

He slid into it, drawing his knees close to his chest. 

"Thank you," he murmured, reaching out for a cup. He lifted it gingerly to his lips, his tongue darting out to skim its surface. 

“Like a dog," his mother had always laughed, hand to her mouth, when he'd done it. 

His father would smile. "More like a snake."

A curl of smoke, seeming almost like a hand, drifted into the air, gently winding itself round and round. He took a tentative sip, feeling the numbness that you get when you drink something that's way too hot. He swallowed, letting the liquid warm his throat. 

"It's good," he said quietly. 

She smiled. "But I didn't bring you here for the tea. Come on, I want to show you." 

He followed, mug still in hand as she smoothed out her skirts and sat on the piano stool. She wiggled her fingers as writers do when they're trying to find a word, lifting the piano cover. There was an air of childish excitement surrounding her as she huffed away what little dust there was on the piano keys. As she set her hands down and the first note rang out, he half winced. He'd heard this song a million times. The one that was soft, like a lullaby. The one that had made him fall asleep over his detective work and the one that had woken him up shortly after because of the terrible mistake she'd made in the middle. 

He'd never really enjoyed piano music, but listened anyway, nerves spiking as it got to the point where she would glide her hands over the keys and the notes would get higher and sound a little more frantic, more loud. There was a plonk from the piano, and he couldn't tell if it was intentional. She paused, started again, and then paused again. And re-started. 

"Sorry, I've just lost my touch." She sounded sheepish, and her voice was lowered now. She turned her body towards him. There was an expression on her face he couldn't quite read. "I thought having someone with me might help. That's a little selfish, isn't it? When my playing is this bad. I just… Haven't been able to play." Her hands rested on the keys. "It doesn't sound like it, but I've been playing since I was a very young child. They called me a prodigy. Then, suddenly… I couldn't." 

He recognised the tone of her voice as she spoke the last word, spat it like venom out of her mouth. It was disgust, revultion at herself and the loss of her talent. 

She turned her eyes upon his face and he looked down. 

"What am I?" 

The words diffused into the air. 

"If I can't do the thing they said I was born to do… What am I? What's left?" 

There was a silence. For a moment he felt a terrible, selfish relief--somebody else who echoed his own thoughts. Finally. Somebody else who felt worthless and miserable. Bitter. 

"But," she said. "I think it'll come back."

And there was the thing that she had that he didn't: optimism.


	2. haworthia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow look at me updating at the end of the year
> 
> i really just;; man i haven't come back to this in so long

Shuichi was woken in the night a few months after their encounter, fresh from hours of tossing and turning. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his clothes were wet. He couldn't help perspiring when he had bad dreams. Kaede had been playing again; he could hear above the slight noise from the house to his left, the clink of dishes and glasses that meant that the neighbour to the left had finished their dinner. It wasn't terribly loud, and in the day he wouldn't regularly have been able to hear it, but when it was this late and nearly nobody was making any sound, it was distracting. He sat and listened to the music. She'd gotten slightly better as of late, making less mistakes and never halting even when she did. It was almost good. 

He shuffled to his window and pulled up the shutters. There was the faintest of amber glows from Kaede's windows in the room where she kept her piano, and if he squinted he could make out her figure through the curtain. That was dangerous, he thought. She really ought to have gotten better, thicker, curtains. He watched her for a moment, before realising with a tiny start that perhaps watching his neighbour through her window was creepy and he shouldn't do it lest he seem suspicious if she got murdered or kidnapped. He pictured fleetingly how mortifying it would be for he, a detective, if he got arrested and thrown in jail. It wouldn't be easy to explain his way out of staring at her house in the middle of the night. That was what perverts did. Ah--that was a punishable offence, too, wasn't it? Being a pervert. He dropped the shutters, recoiling from the window and walking as though by clockwork back to his bed, where he threw himself down. The stack of papers was high on his desk and just within his line of sight, looming high above his head. Sometimes he had nightmares where the paper formed jaws and ate him whole. What sort of sound would it make when it ate him? Would it crunch? Crinkle? He couldn't tell. He supposed since it was paper, it should make a rustling sound, but then again, paper didn't make jaws out of itself and eat people whole, and he was being quite silly again, and he should go back to sleep. 

He wriggled back up to his pillow like a caterpillar and hugged it close to him, feeling it huff a sigh into his neck as he drifted back to sleep without even pulling his blankets to cover him. 

He worked for nearly the entirety of the next day, scribbling notes on paper and biting at his lip until it bled and he had to stand in the mirror holding his mouth open, pressing a piece of tissue paper to the wound until it stopped bleeding and he had to spit the stubborn flecks of paper that had stuck to it into the sink. It was becoming tiring. He couldn't think anymore. It felt like somebody had stuffed cotton into his ears until it swallowed his brain whole. It felt like he was constantly buffering. It felt like he was an idiot. He couldn't sit at his desk without feeling like something was wrong; he had the urge to kick his chair away and sit on his bed for hours until he died and decayed and cobwebs grew on his skeleton. Then, at least, he wouldn't have to work. But that was being dramatic, and he was supposed to be able to work. He was supposed to be normal--better than normal. Above average. Work faster. Work better. Smile. Be pleasant. Be better. But instead, he was trash. One day everybody would realise, and they would leave him behind. Yes, that was what it was--everything was a race, and they thought he was in front, and everybody was counting on him and so proud of him until he ran out of energy. Or tripped. He'd definitely already tripped. 

Work hard and get a good job, he'd said once when asked for his dream for the future in school. It was a generic answer, the one that everybody expected. It was a reasonable dream, because everybody wanted to earn money. Everybody wanted to succeed. 

He'd never realised how flawed that was. He'd worked hard, and he'd gotten the "good job" he'd dreamed of, but he never thought of what would come after. He'd bought plants, started and abandoned pottery projects that ended up in the trash, attempted writing letters to relatives who gave bland, insincere answers, and all for nothing. Blindly searching for some sort of fulfillment in his boring, tiring, aimless life. 

He almost didn't hear the knock at his door that came sometime in the evening. Before 101 would walk their dog each day, after 107 had begun cooking, flooding the street with the smell of curry and chicken and, if he inhaled hard enough, rice. He peered outside, unsurprised to see that it was Kaede. He was almost afraid that something terrible had happened, but everything had seemed normal that day. 

"Hello?" He bit at the inside of his cheek, keeping the gap in the door small in case he wanted to slam it closed. 

"Good evening," she said, with the sort of tone that suggested that she was used to people being wary of her. "I was wondering if you'd like to come over. Just… tea." 

Suspicious, he thought vaguely. 

"Just tea?" 

"Yeah." 

He contemplated it for a moment. Whatever. Death was better than paperwork. He shrugged and nodded, following her back to her house. 

"You've looked tired, lately," she said, forcing him into a chair. "So I thought we should have a talk. You're always indoors. Working?"

"Working." 

She screwed up her face. "And it's rough?" 

He nodded. "I don't feel good enough." 

"Nobody's good enough." She tilted her head. "So long as you get by."

"I don't." 

He didn't know why he was here, talking to a stranger. It was all kind of odd, and he had the feeling that he should leave, which, when had, probably meant that he should leave. It was the sort of feeling that, when ignored, got people axed. He'd thought about death a few minutes prior, and he didn't really want to get axed at that moment. (He probably would, later, when he was back to his paperwork, but he could always return.) 

"I--" 

She cut him off. "No matter what people expect of you, it doesn't matter." She gestured to her piano. "I think I realised what was wrong. Wasn't having fun with what I was doing, so it started sounding forced. Like… I mean, just go for it. You started what you do for a reason. Nothing's pointless. Find some way to have fun."

She said it like it was easy. Good for her, or whatever. He wondered again why he was here. She knew other people, right? She should've saved the pep talk for them. 

He hummed a noncommittal and shrugged. 

She narrowed her eyes, like she didn't quite believe that he believed her, which was correct. 

"I guess," he said, to get her off his back. "You're right. I should… have fun. Doing work." 

She nodded, slowly. He stared at her piano for a moment and, feeling awkward, went for the door.


	3. spathiphyllum

In this world, there are two kinds of people: those who figure out their problems, and those who don't. Kaede Akamatsu is part of the first group. Shuichi Saihara is not. 

He spends days flipping through his work. It's all useless. Nothing seems right; it's all slightly off-kilter and feels like going through a photo album where all the pictures are tilted. Nothing fits. Everything is cold. There is no warmth even though the heater isn't broken. His work keeps piling up. Food doesn't taste like anything. His work keeps piling up. Sleep doesn't come, he just lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. His work keeps piling up. He checks his phone for calls and texts that don't come. His work keeps piling up. People's lives are on the line and he can't do anything. His work keeps piling up. It comes and keeps coming. It won't stop. 

His hands are clammy and he doesn't know why. He can't stop thinking. He can't think. He can't stop thinking useless things. Everything he needs to think isn't there. It loops and it loops and it loops. 

Have fun. Have fun. He tries, but it makes him feel worse. He's not empty, but all there is is panic and fear and stress. 

His work keeps piling up. 

He doesn't get better. He doesn't solve his cases. He doesn't stay healthy. 

Work hard. Get a good job. Suffer. 

They find him on the morning of a summer day, strangled by a belt in the middle of his living room. There is no suicide note, but no sign of a struggle. The windows are closed and the blinds are drawn. There is no evidence of a break-in. Nobody has seen anything, but his neighbours say he has seemed "off" lately. 

The case is tied up neatly, and everybody forgets. Life goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> wow i can’t believe i spent nine months writing this. iconic. i hate myself abdhfh


End file.
